Halfway through emptying my third bag of shredded coconut this past week, my tiny reptilian brain began to glimpse a theme in this month’s baking. Coconut-Chocolate Tiramisu. Coconut Cream Tarts. Could the common thread be red velvet cake? Licorice whips? Monkey pantaloons? No, no, and NO, that’s not it…perhaps coconut? Yes! There has been a…

Sometimes I feel like my Tuesdays with Dorie posts get a little predictable. Maybe it’s to be expected, when you bake something from the same cookbook every week, there’s bound to be some repetition and overlap of sentiment. But it really struck me as I went to write this entry that I have said it…

I’ve been something of a Daring Baker’s slacker these past few months. Not to bore you with whining, but it’s been busy, none of the challenges have appealed to me, yadda yadda boo hoo hoo. But that all changed this month, when I learned that the challenge was tiramisu. Whoooo, I LOVE me some tiramisu!…

The other day I was making something with peanut butter–I think it was this wonderful West African Chicken Peanut Stew, which might sound iffy but I promise is really wonderful–and my husband, who was lurking around the kitchen stealing bites of everything, started making big puppy dog eyes at the peanut butter. He proceeded to…

I had my doubts about these Honey Wheat cookies. The truth is, I OD’ed on wheat germ back in high school, and it’s been years since I’ve even wanted to be in the same room with the stuff. (Lunch every day involved yogurt with gobs of wheat germ stirred into it. Four years of this…

Last week I was invited to a fondue party. It was all of my favorite things in one room: friends, melted chocolate, and an immense smorgasbord of bite-sized dippable goodies. What a world we live in, that communal chocolate-dipping is a socially accepted–even celebrated–ritual! For the fondue party, we were all asked to bring some…

When people hear I’m a pastry chef, they often ask similar questions, like “What’s your favorite thing to make?” and “What’s your favorite dessert to eat?” I never know how to answer the first question because, seriously, it’s work. I enjoy it, but it’s still a job, it’s not like I waltz into the kitchen…

This year marked the 8th year my husband and I celebrated Valentine’s Day together. Our first V-Day, we were both in college, and I cooked him crepes in my dorm kitchen (always a scary proposition) and we ate them on a blanket on the floor of my dorm room. Maybe it was the fumes from…